Critics Question Kerry's Convenient Faith and Family Values
by Jenni Parker
August 2, 2004
(AgapePress) - A spokeswoman for Concerned Women for America's Legislative Action Committee (CWALAC) is criticizing Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry for "masquerading" beneath the cloak of faith and family values. Meanwhile, a Catholic spokesman suggests the candidate may be pulling that cloak on or off at his own convenience. After attending Kerry's speech at the Democratic National Convention last week, Dr. Janice Shaw Crouse of CWALAC said she was appalled that the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate had the nerve to "publicly pretend to value faith and family" when his voting pattern "screams hypocrisy." She says Kerry's constituents need only inspect the Massachusetts senator's voting record to determine his true values.
Crouse believes most American voters would be shocked to learn to what so-called values Kerry has adhered during his legislative tenure. For instance, she points out, "In spite of Kerry's claim to believe that 'life begins at conception,' he voted at least six times against banning partial birth abortion, a procedure that takes human life as late as the third trimester of a pregnancy."
And, the CWA spokeswoman adds, despite Kerry's claim that he championed victims' rights and made prosecuting violence against women a priority, in 2004 he voted against the Unborn Victims of Violence Act -- legislation that criminalizes harming or killing an unborn baby in an assault on a pregnant woman.
Also, Crouse notes, in the Democratic nominee's acceptance speech, he criticized the religious beliefs of others while touting his own: "I don't wear my religion on my sleeve," Kerry said, "but faith has given me values and hope to live by."
But Crouse feels such words are repeatedly proved empty by the liberal senator's actions, such as his past choices regarding unborn victims of violence and partial birth abortion, and his continued support for embryonic stem cell research. "Once again," she observes, "we see that whatever 'values' Senator Kerry has chosen to live by produce strange results."
Crouse says President Bush's beliefs apparently guide him to value human life, while Kerry's beliefs obviously lead him to support things like the harvesting of human embryos and the creation of life for the purpose of being destroyed, supposedly in the name of scientific advancement. But Crouse says Kerry's support for embryonic stem cell research requires another kind of faith -- "blind hope," since ESCR has never resulted in a single cure for disease.
Catholic leader troubled by Kerry's two Americas
Another person who found the appeals to faith in Kerry's acceptance speech questionable is William Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. He says at one time people of faith constituted the heart and soul of both the Republican and Democratic parties, but Kerry's speech underscored how things have changed.
Noting Kerry's words, "...we welcome people of faith. America is not us and them," Donohue points out that the candidate, while apparently condemning conservatives for using religion as a political wedge, is doing that very thing himself. Meanwhile, even as he denounces the religious rhetoric of the Christian right, the liberal senator's own faith seems to have become a major emphasis in his speeches and campaign ads lately.
Donohue notes that Kerry has never really detailed how religion has influenced his life up till now. Nevertheless, the senator's campaign has begun running TV ads that emphasize his supposed religious commitment, revealing that Kerry was an altar boy, considered becoming a priest, and wore a rosary around his neck during his service in Vietnam. And recently, Kerry told CNN's Larry King that his religion is "the bedrock" of his life. However, some of those closest to Kerry in the past contradict the notion that he was ever any more than nominally Catholic.
This leads Donohue to wonder whether the presidential hopeful is "playing politics with his religion." He notes that during Kerry's first marriage to the non-Catholic Julia Thorne, the supposedly devout Kerry never insisted that his children be raised in the Roman Catholic faith. That, like the Democratic politician's stance on abortion, is in direct contradiction to the Church's teachings -- as was his second marriage. Kerry wed Teresa Heinz before getting an annulment of his previous marriage.
In any case, Donohue says Kerry's speech at the Democratic National Convention was problematic -- and not only because of his sudden, pragmatic emphasis on faith and family values. The Catholic pro-family leader feels the Democrat's unconscious separation of America into two camps -- "the 'us' and the 'them,'" may be even more troubling.
In describing that dichotomy, Donohue contends Kerry "literally aligned the most active Democrats with the faithless and then tagged the faithful as outsiders." Now, the Catholic League president says, all the Democratic presidential candidate has to do is explain this to the 90 percent of Americans who believe in God.
